An intersectionality framework for transformative services research

The authors introduce the theory of intersectionality which refers to the interactivity of social identities such as race, class, and gender in shaping individuals’ experiences. Intersectionality is explored using cases and examples from healthcare services, which involve high contact encounters with consumers who may possess multiple disadvantages (e.g. low income, illness, immigrant status) and therefore make for interesting contexts for intersectional analyses. Intersectionality is proposed as a framework that can shed light on the experiences of consumers who belong to multiple disadvantaged social groups, such as being black and low income, immigrant, and in poor health. Detailed guidelines for conducting intersectionality-driven services research are provided, which take into account the interconnected nature of multiple disadvantages. The authors emphasize that intersectionality offers a holistic look at the co-created nature of services and it can be instrumental in designing tailored and fair services to improve consumer and societal well-being.     

Media visibility and board gender diversity

Despite the efforts of governments and market regulators, the under-representation of women on corporate boards continues to be a global concern. In this context, this study extends prior literature by investigating the relationship between media visibility and gender diversity on boards of directors. We examine a sample of 101 Spanish nonfinancial listed firms over the period 2003–2016. We find that media visibility positively affects board gender diversity. This finding is robust to alternative measures of media visibility and different econometric specifications. This research contributes to the existing literature on the relationship between media and board composition by suggesting the role of the media as a driver of board gender diversity. Results support the notion that the media are able to discipline managers and dominant owners by inflicting reputational costs.     

International diversity of authorship in advertising research

Although advertising is a global discipline, several of the world's regions remain under-represented in the leading advertising journals, with North American dominance of review boards and authorship in these journals. Introducing this special issue of the International Conference on Research in Advertising (ICORIA), this paper assesses the international diversity of authorship in advertising research by looking at the nationalities of author teams of articles published in the leading advertising journals over the last 10 years. Among advertising journals, international diversity of authorship is clearly greatest in the International Journal of Advertising (IJA), and the even greater international diversity of this ICORIA special issue highlights the Journal's international orientation. The fact that diversity of authorship also relates to article citations and therefore to research performance further emphasizes the need for more international diversity of authorship in advertising research.     

Supplier diversity and supply chain management: A strategic approach

Although purchasing trends are moving toward consolidation, a strong economic argument can be made for supplier diversity. In fact, most Fortune 500 companies currently employ supplier diversity initiatives. If integrated into the overall corporate strategy, supplier diversity can become a source of competitive advantage for corporations. In order for such integration to successfully occur, however, the initiative must have top management commitment, a supportive culture, and the availability of champions to promote the proposal. Minority suppliers, in turn, need to realize that their failure or success in this highly competitive environment depends on their ability to continually develop overall competences, to be learning organizations, and to become increasingly attuned to and adept at building strategic alliances amongst themselves and with their corporate customers. In these respects, they can make use of intermediary organizations (such as local supplier councils) to improve their competences and competitive edge.     

An alternative approach to discriminating multivariate populations and its applications to marketing research

A new method for discriminating among multivariate populations, called the Hausdorff procedure, is introduced to the marketing literature. Rules for classification are defined and a limited simulation study is conducted. For the simulation, both the level of collinearity among the discriminating variables and the level of overlap among the populations are varied. The results indicate that this new procedure is particularly suitable when there is either a high degree of collinearity among the predictor variables or considerable overlap of the populations being investigated. The Hausdorff procedure is also applied to two sets of consumer data. In each instance, it is found to be superior to linear discriminant analysis with respect to the percentage of correct classifications.     

The impact of media fragmentation on audience targeting: An empirical generalisation approach

With increasing fragmentation, advertisers are choosing media based upon their ability to deliver specific target markets to maximise return on media expenditure. In doing so, they rely upon the claims of media providers (whether in part or in full) about how their audiences differ from those of competing offerings. In this paper we consider just how successful media have been at attracting specialist audiences. We seek empirical generalisation by including a very broad range of audience member characteristics, multiple media types, two countries and three years of data in our analysis. We find that while there are some differences in the audiences that competing media deliver, these differences are largely inconsequential when (a) considered in light of the audience differentiation claims made by the media themselves and (b) that implicit in the audience targeting concept is the notion that media audiences are highly segmented. This research will challenge advertisers' entrenched assumptions about audience targeting and provide useful benchmarks for advertisers who place any credence on media selling propositions.     

Consumer demand for healthy eating considering diversity – an economic approach for German individuals

Rising incidence and costs of diet‐related diseases have led to nutritionists' and economists' interest in factors determining the demand for healthy eating. The present study analyses the demand for healthy eating by the use of a new food‐based indicator, which combines the health value and diversity of a food basket. Although the diversity aspect gains in importance in recommendations for healthy eating it was not considered adequately in healthy eating indicators until now. Within the household production theory the new indicator is used to identify factors influencing the demand for healthy food diversity for 3220 German individuals. The results of regression analyses show that the demand for a healthy diet is influenced by age and mainly by knowledge, attitudinal and behavioural (proxy‐)variables as education level, participation in a health training course and sport activity. On the basis of these findings conclusions are drawn for health and nutrition policy in Germany and Europe.     

Best practices to increase racial diversity in business schools: What actually works according to a nationwide survey of business schools

Many scholarly works have identified potential strategies for hiring underrepresented minority faculty members. However, no known nationwide study of business schools has explored whether these various strategies are associated with more faculty diversity. The authors explored best practices in corporations and higher education in the following areas: diversity priorities, strategic planning, outreach to underrepresented minority communities, administrative structures, and diversity training. The nationwide survey of business school deans showed that authority structures, which have proven to work in business, also are effective in academia. Similar to business results, training programs by themselves do not seem to be effective in increasing diversity.     

An information approach to international currencies

Models of currency competition focus on the 5% of trading attributable to balance-of-payments flows. We introduce an information approach that focuses on the other 95%. Important departures from traditional models arise when transactions convey information. First, prices reveal different information depending on whether trades are direct or though vehicle currencies. Second, missing markets arise due to insufficiently symmetric information, rather than insufficient transactions scale. Third, the indeterminacy of equilibrium that arises in traditional models is resolved: currency trade patterns no longer concentrate arbitrarily on market size. Empirically, we provide a first analysis of transactions across a full market triangle: the euro, yen and US dollar. The estimated transaction effects on prices support the information approach.     

A netnographical approach to typologizing customer engagement and corporate misconduct

Customer engagement has important implications for the organization. The study developed a typology to understand customer engagement and its relationship with corporate misconduct. Customer engagement is categorized into co-developing, augmenting, influencing, and mobilizing behaviors, which are typologized into organizational and peer engagement, with co-developing and augmenting behaviors classified as organizational engagement, and the remaining two as peer engagement. In view of a focus on negative engagement in the case of corporate misconduct in previous research, this study deployed a netnographical approach to exploring positive and neutral engagement within the organization and with peers. The findings indicate that corporate misconduct not only elicits a negative response but may also elicit positive or indifferent engagement behaviors. This study contributes to customer engagement and corporate misconduct research by delving into underexplored aspects of consumer behavior.     

Returns to alliance portfolio diversity: The relative effects of partner diversity on firm's innovative performance and productivity

This study considers the impact of diversification in types of technological alliances, resulting in alliance portfolio diversity, on various dimensions of a firm's performance, as they relate to exploration and exploitation. Using a large panel of innovative firms in the Netherlands, this study shows that partner type diversity in a firm's alliance portfolio has an inverted U-shaped relationship with productivity and radical innovative performance and a positive relationship with incremental innovative performance. Moreover, the results suggest that a lower level of diversity is needed to achieve an optimal level of productivity compared to radical innovative performance, whereas for incremental innovative performance a higher level of portfolio diversity appears to give the best performance.     

Gender diversity on boards for organizational impression management: An empirical study of Japanese firms

The literature on gender diversity on corporate boards is growing, yet firms' motivation for achieving such diversity remains underexplored. This study examines the potential objective behind appointing female directors that could be driven by organizational impression management based on the hypothesis that firms strategically propose to nominate female directors when they need to form a favorable impression to their stakeholders, especially in relation to executive compensation. This study analyzed annual shareholders meeting agendas for 3585 listed Japanese firms between 2011 and 2020 and found that firms placed female director appointments on the meeting agenda when they needed approval for the revision of executive compensation. This tendency was strengthened for firms with more outside directors. This study's approach and findings contribute to the literature on corporate board gender diversity by suggesting organizational impression management as a potential strategic motivation behind the appointment of female directors.     

Advertising industry evolution: agency creativity,fluid teams and diversity. An exploratory investigation

ABSTRACT

The advertising industry is in a state of flux, where the agency model is evolving alongside todays’ fast paced digital environment. This paper reviews the drivers of change in the industry and explores how creative advertising agencies are evolving and developing their team resources to improve the creative product using the resource based view (RBV) as a theoretical lens. The study adopted a qualitative approach using a key informant strategy with 16 interviews with Creative Directors, Chief Executive Officer’s and Heads of Planning and Account Directors. The findings suggest that agencies who embrace team functional diversity, include external stakeholders and develop team fluidity as a dynamic capability will enhance agency creativity.     

An additional approach for interpretation of multiple discriminant analysis in business research

Several useful approaches for interpreting multiple discriminant analysis (MDA), including graph plots, have recently been illustrated for business researchers. This article proposes and illustrates an extension of the traditional plotting procedures in MDA that allows the depiction of both group overlaps and differences among groups. We also discuss several other interpretational approaches in MDA.     

What: An argumentative groupware approach for organizing and documenting research activities

The topic of this paper is a process‐vs.‐product design method representation called Argumentative Writing (AW). Argumentative writing is a multi‐representation approach for conducting and reporting research projects. AW has at least two representations: one for structuring the problem‐understanding/solving process and one for communicating its product to others. We discuss WHAT, a hypertext‐based tool for AW. In WHAT (Writing with a Hypermedia‐based Argumentative Tool), the design process is captured using Rittel's Issue Based Information Systems (IBIS) method (Conklin, 1988; Hashim, 1990a; Rittel, 1980). The product of the design process is represented in WHAT using a general document‐representation scheme. In the Introduction we raise four major issues that we explore in the rest of the paper. Also in the Introduction, we show the impact the WHAT approach can have on organizational computing applications such as business education and training (Hashim, Rathnam, & Whinston, 1991) and the design of dialectical organizational information systems. The section “A Methodological Basis for AW Tools”; deals with the rationale behind choosing the IBIS method in capturing the design process. The section after that explains WHAT, and the section following it explores its use as a groupware tool. The applicability of WHAT and its pros and cons are discussed in two separate sections. In the Conclusion we outline the potentiality of the approach and present suggestions for its further development. Since our first reporting on WHAT (Hashim, 1990b), the AW approach was found applicable to educational, scientific, and business areas. One such application is for structuring case discussions in business schools (Hashim et al., 1991).     

An ex-ante approach to brand capability valuation

There are numerous financial metrics available in the academic and commercial world to estimate brand value. In the context of mergers and acquisitions, managers often use such metrics when purchasing or selling brands. However, the measurement of brand equity in a going-concern has received scant attention in the academic literature. The well-known Interbrand™ approach is an ex-post calculation of brand value. This paper extends Interbrand's brand strength valuation model by developing an ex-ante approach to guide managers in their budgeting and strategic decision-making processes geared towards building brand value. It then empirically tests the model in a company with an internationally recognized brand.     

An Alternative to the Impasse

Abstract

The volume of violence portrayed in American mass media has caused concern for decades, but media self-interests, weak governmental policies, and the First Amendment protection for freedom of expression have stymied efforts to improve media content. Grassroots endeavors to alert parents to possible negative effects may be a more effective approach. “Pulling the Plug on Media Violence,” a campaign aimed at escalating consumer awareness, has been implemented by a volunteer group in North Carolina. This study, using the results of a statewide poll, evaluates the campaign's effectiveness and provides useful findings for future efforts devoted to similar issues. The survey shows that although awareness of the campaign was high, the level of concern about media effects was not influenced directly. Religiosity, gender and parenthood were found to be the most important factors linked to higher levels of concern about media violence. Future efforts to mobilize an anti-violence effort may want to target messages to parents (especially mothers) and work with churches in order to increase active involvement.     

Applying the lens of intersectionality to UK equal opportunities and diversity policies

Incorporating the social differentiations of gender, race, disability, sexual orientation, religion or belief, and age into UK equal opportunities and diversity legislation involved creating a new single equality body for Great Britain (England, Scotland, and Wales). This paper assesses the efficacy of an Equality and Diversity Mainstreaming approach established in Northern Ireland (NI) for this new agency. It also stresses the potential value of “intersectionality” to further policy planning and development. It is argued that the combination of the NI model underpinned by the concept of intersectionality could offer a way forward for the new agency where, importantly, the issue of gender remains one of the most important axes of domination. Copyright © 2010 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An approach to prioritize customer-based,cost-effective service enhancements

Service firms routinely enhance their offerings to satisfy and retain current customers and to attract new customers. We show theoretically that service improvements can be prioritized by simultaneously taking into account the likely incremental revenue (through increased customer value) and the incremental cost of making the improvement. The customer values obtained from a sample of respondents, and cost estimates obtained from managers of the service providing organization are combined to prioritize improvements using a ‘bang for the buck’ (i.e. value/cost) rule. Such a prioritization would be helpful to come up with a ‘short list’ of service improvements. The items on the short list can be evaluated in detail for their ‘Return on Quality’. The approach for prioritization is illustrated in the context of improving passenger train service between a pair of cities in India. An adaptive self-explicated approach is used for obtaining customer values and cost estimates. The customer values so elicited display substantial cross-validity.